She’s the man: Vir Das pits men against women

Ask Vir Das if he’s ever been to a kitty party, and he laughs. “No, I don’t get invited to them. But I do hang out with women, and on the right days, they talk to me,” he says. We’re talking about the research Das might have done for his upcoming stand-up show, Battle Of Da Sexes, which pits men against women. It’s taken him six months to put together.

“I’d done a show on history before, so I wanted to do something scientific. Here, I’ve used a more scientific, academic approach to analysing facts, figures and numbers on gender-specific behaviour,” says Das, adding, “I’d love to tell you that I learned from lots of experience, but the truth is, it was lots of Wikipedia that aided my research.”

Seated behind Das is his girlfriend, and we can’t help but ask her what she thinks of the show, considering it pokes fun at women. But as she tells us about how she foudn it great, he chimes in to say, “It makes fun of men and women in equal measure. I’ve been accused of siding with women more.”

At the end of the show, though, the audience will pick a ‘winner’, after the audience is segregated into men and women, and made part of a verbal battle. Considering men are always complaining about the ‘complicated’ nature of women, we wonder if Das understands them better after his research. “I’m not saying I can be a better boyfriend now or create better understanding of female behaviour. But when things go wrong, I now know why,” he says.

And that’s not all that’s keeping the funny man busy. Over the next couple of years, he has as many as nine Bollywood releases, including a lead role opposite Kangana Ranaut. “There are releases in October, November, December, February and March…,” he says.